Truth or Die

by James Patterson

That was all he said. Or maybe that was all I heard.

  For sure, it was more than I was able to say, which was nothing. I could barely breathe, let alone talk. But I was keenly aware. The kid came back for me.

  Later, I would thank him. The heart rate would slow; the thoughts and words would come. I’d point out that this was the second time he’d saved my life. I’d even crack that I’d never been so happy to have someone ignore what I asked him to do. If Owen had fled back to the hotel from Lamont’s car as I’d asked—as he’d told me he would—I would’ve been the one lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.

  But he hadn’t. So I wasn’t.

  Yes. Later, I would do all this. When there was time to think and sort things out. But the moment after I pulled the trigger was no different than the moment right before.

  No thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. The same instinct Owen had.

  Let’s go.

  CHAPTER 57

  I WENT to sleep having killed a man. I woke up thinking I’d at least find out who he was.

  It didn’t matter if he wasn’t carrying ID. There were other ways. So many other ways. Fingerprints. Dental records. Facial recognition software. If ever there was a job for CrackerJack …

  “What time is it?” I asked Owen with my one good eye open off the pillow. My head was killing me. The rest of me wasn’t faring much better.

  Owen was sitting on the edge of the other queen bed in our two-room bunker at the Stonington staring intently at the television and the start of the local morning news. He could’ve been a statue if it hadn’t been for his hands. They were doing that dry wash thing again. What’s the deal with that?

  “It’s six,” he answered.

  That explained the hint of daylight along the perimeter of the drawn curtains, not to mention why I still felt so tired. It was barely dawn, and I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. Longer than Owen, though, apparently.

  There’s one exception to the age-old maxim about news reporting—if it bleeds, it leads—and that’s the early-morning broadcast. At the start of the day, one thing trumps everything else. The weather. Short of an apocalypse, that’s what people want to hear about first. The eternal question? It’s not the meaning of life. It’s Will I need an umbrella?

  According to the far-too-chipper weatherman pointing out some incoming clouds on the Doppler radar, the answer was a definite maybe. There was a forty percent chance of showers in the afternoon.

  Of course, there was a hundred percent chance of two shooting deaths overnight in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

  The weatherman, still grinning, sent it back to the anchor, who did her best to segue into a more somber tone as the words DETECTIVE DEATH appeared on-screen. Next to them was a picture of Lamont. He must have fallen to the ground a thousand times in my mind before I’d finally been able to drift off to sleep.

  Now tell us who the goddamn son of a bitch was who killed him. Tell us about “Gordon’s partner.”

  As if he could read my mind, Owen stopped rubbing his hands and glanced back over his shoulder at me.

  “They’re not going to know,” he said softly.

  The second he said it, I knew he was right. Even if the police did know, they wouldn’t be quick to release the name to the press. It would raise more questions than answers.

  “At this time, the identity of the second victim, who is believed to be the man responsible for Detective Lamont’s murder, is unknown,” said the anchor, so keyed to her teleprompter that she didn’t seem to even grasp how twisted that sounded.

  Even more so because there wasn’t even a mention of the other triggerman. Me.

  Was there really no one who saw me shoot him?

  The anchor moved on to a fire in a Queens tenement building, prompting Owen to shut off the television. As soon as he turned to me, I knew the question coming, and it certainly wasn’t about how I’d slept.

  “How do you want to do this?” he asked.

  That was the part we hadn’t discussed after returning to the hotel. The how. Our focus had been the what, as in What do we do now? The night had changed everything.

  Detective Lamont was dead, and we knew why. We owed it to him, his family, and everyone he worked with to come forward. Maybe Owen was right. Maybe justice wouldn’t be served in the end. But it no longer seemed like our call to make.

  “Lamont’s precinct,” I said. “I think that’s where we begin.”

  Owen nodded. “Do you want to call ahead?”

  “No. Let’s just show—”

  Before I could get the word up out of my mouth, Owen’s phone lit up on top of his backpack by the TV. I thought it was an incoming call at first, but there was no ring, no buzzing or vibrating.

  “That’s strange,” said Owen, going over to check it.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “It’s an e-mail.”

  “So?”

  “I shouldn’t be getting any,” he said. “The account uses an entity authentication mechanism I designed myself. It’s way beyond the X.509 system.”

  I stared at him blankly. “Okay, now in English,” I said.

  “It means that for me to get an e-mail it has to be piggybacked on one I already sent. But I only set up the account yesterday. I haven’t sent an e-mail to anyone.”

  No sooner did he say it than we both realized he was wrong. He had sent an e-mail to someone. From Lamont’s car.

  “What’s it say?” I asked, watching him read.

  Owen tossed me the phone so I could see for myself. It was more than an e-mail. It was hope.

  Underneath a screen grab from one of the interrogation videos were a name and an address in Washington, DC. Georgetown, to be exact.

  My partner always believed in what he was doing, McGeary added. I hope you do, too.

  BOOK THREE

  TRUST NO ONE, NOT EVEN YOURSELF

  CHAPTER 58

  IT DOESN’T matter if you don’t know a door card from a river card or whether a full house beats a flush, anyone old enough to see the inside of a Las Vegas casino can walk right into the poker room at the Bellagio.

  Walking into Bobby’s Room is a different story.

  Bobby’s Room—named after Bobby Baldwin, the 1978 World Series of Poker champion—is the poker room inside the poker room at the Bellagio. It features two high-stakes tables that are completely walled off from the other forty some-odd tables, complete with a polished-looking host, a maître d’ of sorts, who stands guard at the door to make sure none of the riffraff ever make it in. Minimum buy-in is twenty grand. The games being played, however, almost always require a much bigger bankroll. Much bigger.

  On the one hand, Bobby’s Room caters to a very privileged clientele. On the other hand, there remains a certain egalitarian element. Especially if that other hand is clutching a boatload of money. Better yet, a yachtload.

  Truth is, almost any Tom, Dick, or Harry flashing a lot of cash is more than welcome to play in Bobby’s Room.

  That goes for any Valerie, too.

  Valerie Jensen, dressed in a leather Chanel skirt, a silk Valentino blouse, and a pair of red Christian Louboutin Lady Peeps, handed the host at the door a house marker for two hundred thousand dollars with the carefree ease of someone who had plenty more where that came from. The fact that she didn’t was the first lesson her father, a professional gambler, had taught her when she was a little girl back in Somers, New York.

  Poker is a game of lies. If you want to tell the truth, go to confession….

  “Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Beverly Sands,” announced the host as he pulled out the lone empty chair at the table for Valerie. It was the “three seat,” three spots to the left of the dealer.

  Valerie, aka Beverly Sands, sat down amid the polite nods from the other players. Save one, they were all pros. She looked around the table; she’d seen them numerous times before on TV, playing tournaments. And more times than not, they were winning those tournaments.

&
nbsp; But as attractive as Valerie was—stunning, really—not a single pro allowed himself the slightest gawk or ogle. That would be a sign of weakness.

  Never show weakness at the poker table.

  That was the second lesson Valerie’s father had taught her. This one doubled as a life lesson, his mantra all during the battle with the lung cancer that ultimately took his life but never his spirit. Never show weakness … period.

  “Two,” said the host, giving the dealer what would’ve been the peace sign anywhere else. In Bobby’s Room, it meant give the lady two hundred thousand dollars in chips, which was what the dealer promptly did after gathering up the pile of cards in front of him. A hand had just finished.

  The game was No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Two cards facedown to each player, followed by five share cards in the middle. Best five from the seven wins. Simple as that.

  Of course, if it were really that simple, there wouldn’t be nearly a thousand books out there dedicated to explaining how the game should be played.

  Given the high stakes, there were no blinds to jump-start the betting. Instead, every player had a five-hundred-dollar ante. This meant Valerie wouldn’t have to wait for the dealer button to come around her way. She could be dealt in immediately.

  With the speed of a robotic arm on a Detroit assembly line, the dealer placed the cards from the last hand in the automatic shuffler to his right and pulled out the second of the two decks used in the game. After a quick cut, he began to deal, giving Valerie a few seconds to look around the table again. Her father’s voice was so clear in her head, it was as if he were back from the grave, sitting right there next to her.

  There’s a fish in every poker game. That’s the player who’s in way over his head. If you look around the table and can’t spot him, get the hell up immediately. Because you’re the fish.

  Valerie smiled to herself. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Her fish was seated directly across the table in the eighth seat. He was the only other nonpro at the table, but everyone knew who he was. That’s just the way it is with multimillionaires. When you land in Vegas in your own Gulfstream G650, it’s tough to fly under the radar.

  Shahid Al Dossari was a Saudi Arabian banker who was purportedly an advisor to the Saudi royal family, among other things. He was handsome, he was charismatic, and he was currently under investigation for money laundering by the US Government.

  Including Special Agent Valerie Jensen.

  “It’s your action, Ms. Sands,” said the dealer with a slight nod. The betting had been checked around to her.

  Valerie reached for the sunglasses that had been resting in her blond hair, dropping them down across her blue eyes. Slowly, she lifted up her two hole cards on their edges, pulling them toward her across the felt as if she were giving the table a shave. Game on.

  This one’s for you, Dad….

  CHAPTER 59

  VALERIE WASN’T sure when the exact moment would come. Only that it was coming.

  It could take an hour. Maybe upward of three or four. Or maybe only twenty minutes, over and done lickety-split. The cards had to cooperate, of course. But so did Al Dossari. And so far, he was.

  Educated in the States—Yale undergrad, Wharton MBA—Al Dossari was as Americanized as a Saudi could ever be. He loved Tennessee whiskey, New York Fashion Week, and shoot-’em-up Hollywood movies, but most of all, what he loved was women. He worshipped them. Never mind that they were treated like second-class citizens back in his homeland. That was there. He was here. America. Where women had all the power. Just so long as they were pretty.

  While the pros at the table maintained their well-trained discipline, paying far more attention to the action in the middle of the table than to the eye candy seated at one end of it, Shahid Al Dossari was a man distracted. Never a good thing in a high-stakes poker game.

  In fact, forty-five minutes after sitting down, Valerie was fairly convinced that the only reason he flat-called her raise from out of position was so he would have an excuse to introduce himself. Maybe even flirt a little.

  The moment had come.

  Valerie had raised the initial bet of twenty-five hundred dollars, making it ten thousand. Al Dossari called quickly, while the remaining players all folded, including the initial bettor.

  That left just Valerie and Al Dossari in the hand. Heads-up action, as the saying goes.

  The dealer promptly buried a card and proceeded to turn up three cards in front of him, otherwise known as the flop.

  7♣ 9♥ 8♥

  It wasn’t just any flop; it was an action flop. There were straight possibilities. Flush possibilities. In fact, with two cards still to come, there were very few hands that weren’t a possibility at this point.

  The betting was on Al Dossari, who promptly checked with a silent tap of the felt. Valerie had been the one who’d raised preflop, so this was hardly a surprise move. She had control of the hand, but the only way to keep it that way was for her to increase the pot. A “continuation bet.”

  “Twenty thousand,” she said, reaching for her chips.

  Behind her sunglasses, though, she wasn’t looking at her chips. Her eyes were focused on Al Dossari, hoping to see a reaction of some kind—a tell—that would give away the strength of his hand.

  But he barely blinked. Instead, he snap-called her, tossing two ten-thousand-dollar chips into the pot.

  So much for the easy way, thought Valerie. Besides, easy was boring….

  Again, the dealer buried a card before flipping over the “turn”—the fourth card—faceup next to the other three. It was the ace of diamonds.

  The betting opened with Al Dossari, who checked as he’d done before. As much as he was staring at Valerie, he still hadn’t said anything. At least, not out loud. The fact that he’d called her last two bets, though, was definitely telling her something. It was time to find out more.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be stringing me along, would you?” asked Valerie, flashing the most disarming smile she could muster.

  Al Dossari kept his stare, and for a moment or two remained silent. But it was no use. Beverly Sands, the buxom blonde dressed to the nines, was exactly his type. She was his Miss America.

  “I was actually thinking the same thing myself, that you were stringing me along,” he said, smiling back with perfect teeth. “I’ve been known to have a weakness for women.”

  That got a few knowing chuckles from around the table. Al Dossari’s reputation preceded him.

  “So that ace of diamonds on the turn didn’t help you?” asked Valerie.

  Al Dossari dropped a forearm on the padded rail of the table, leaning forward over his stack of chips. “Who said I needed help?”

  And there it was, an absolute rarity at the poker table. Someone telling the truth. Al Dossari had a made hand. Valerie was sure of it. Because that’s what men do when they’re trying to impress a woman. They talk too much.

  “In that case, I’ll check as well,” she said.

  With a simple tap on the felt, Valerie surrendered any leverage she had in the hand. But leverage can be a tricky thing.

  And there was still one more card to be played.

  CHAPTER 60

  THE DEALER tapped the table with a closed fist, the deck cradled tightly in the palm of his left hand. He peeled off the burn card before turning over the final card, the “river.” It was a jack of spades. The board was now complete.

  7♣ 9♥ 8♥ A♦ J♠

  Gone was the chance of a flush or anything higher on the pecking order of poker hands. Still, there remained a lot of possibilities. A pair. Two pair. Three of a kind. A straight. And, of course, nothing at all—which on paper would be the worst hand you can have.

  But poker isn’t played on paper.

  For those with the balls to bluff, the worst hand can easily turn into the winning hand. Those same balls are what usually separate the pro from the amateur. Or the sharks from the fish.

  Al Dossari, however, wasn’t bluff
ing when he reached for his chips to open the final round of betting. Valerie had already seen the way he glanced at her stack to see how much she had left. Bet-sizing was as much a part of No-Limit Hold’em as anything else.

  “Twenty-five thousand,” he said, slowly sliding the chips out in front of him.

  The amount was a little less than half the pot, not exactly small but hardly big enough to force Valerie off a decent hand. Al Dossari was making the classic “value bet.” He wanted her to call.

  But Valerie had no intention of calling.

  “Raise,” she announced.

  She made a move for her chips and then stopped, instead resting her forearms against the railing. It looked like indecision. Maybe even nerves. At the very least, Valerie wanted it to appear as if she were thinking, doing the math in her head and then doing it again while trying to calculate the right amount to come over the top of Al Dossari and get him to fold.

  Once again, my darling daughter, poker is a game of lies….

  There was no more thinking to be done. No more math, either. Valerie already knew there was no chance that Al Dossari was going to fold.

  Finally, she lifted her hands, gathering them behind her entire stack of chips. That motion meant the same thing at every poker table in every language, but it wouldn’t be gambling—or any damn fun, for that matter—if you didn’t say the three words out loud in crystal-clear English.

  “I’m all in,” she declared.

  Al Dossari didn’t ask the dealer for a count of how much he now needed to match her bet. Nor did he give it much thought. He simply continued staring at Valerie for another few seconds, oblivious to the other woman who’d just sidled up next to her. Lady Luck.

  “I call,” he said.

  Valerie was supposed to show her cards first, but Al Dossari couldn’t wait. If he wasn’t about to win the hand outright, he thought for sure it would be a chopped pot—that they would both have the same straight.

  Confidently, he turned over his two hole cards. “I flopped it,” he said.